You stand at the shoreline, watching as the water rides the sand in and out. The sky is bright and blue overhead and all around you, people bustle up and down the beach, throwing beach balls or laughing in groups or lounging around under broad umbrellas. You try to ignore all of them and soon the only thing you can hear is the crash of the waves, each the song of a siren calling you toward the deep.

Why did I have to come out here today? Sarah thought as she pummeled through the rain, mud splashing on her boots as she ran along. There was a rundown shack at the edge of the field, just before the trees began, that she was running for. She just hoped the door would open–and that no animals had taken roost inside.

Sarah skidded in the mud and ran right into the door. It wobbled, and then she pushed it open. It swung inside with a loud creak that seemed louder than thunder, but the sound didn’t stop her, and when the door swung shut behind it, she was plunged into darkness.

He had given up struggling. The sackcloth covering his face was damp from his own spit and the air around his head was so warm and thick with his own breath that he could no longer talk without growing dizzy of his own voice.

The hands that held onto him were too numerous to count. They gripped him everywhere–his arms, his legs, his shoulders, at one point his neck, his feet, his hands. Tighter than vices they held onto him, swinging him and dragging him. He had given up struggling.

McKenzie waved to her parents outside the window as the train grumbled to a shaky start. She stood on her seat and pressed her face into the glass as they moved sideways out of her vision. At last she could just barely see them still waving, her mother running after them with her scarf blowing in the wind and her hat wobbling, and then they were gone. McKenzie stayed frozen to the window until the train rounded a bend and she plopped back into her seat.

“Well,” she said to herself, “that was fun.”

The small girl crossed her arms and stared across the small compartment at her younger brother, Ezra. He was bundled up so tightly that he looked more like a pile of coats and mittens than an actual person. McKenzie just blew a tuft of hair out of her eyes and shook her head.